Study the label of almost any food product and you're likely to see the rather vague warning "May contain peanuts" somewhere on there, unless of course it's a product that definitely does contain peanuts. As now revealed ...

Bioplastics made from protein sources such as albumin and whey have shown significant antibacterial properties, findings that could eventually lead to their use in plastics used in medical applications such ...

A team led by Marco Casolino of the RIKEN Global Research Cluster's EUSO Team and Masayuki Goto of G-Tech corporation, a private company engaged in the development of radiation measurement equipment, have ...

Butterflies eating food collected from cities around the Fukushima nuclear meltdown site showed higher rates of death and disease, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The concentrations of many historically used, and now widely banned, pesticides and other toxic chemicals—called legacy contaminants—can become magnified in an animal that eats contaminated food; however, ...

The polar bear is known for having alarmingly high concentrations of PCB and other pollutants. But researchers have discovered that Greenland sharks store even more of these contaminants in their bodies.

Home cooks and professional chefs alike the world over can thank Monica Ponder, assistant professor of food science and technology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, for a safer supply of spices.

A Dartmouth-University of Connecticut study of the northeast United States shows that methylmercury concentrations in estuary waters—not in sediment as commonly thought—are the best way to predict mercury contamination ...

Food spoiling and poisoning caused by microbial contamination can cause major health, social, and economic problems. The broad scope of antimicrobial approaches to kill or prevent the growth of microorganisms ...

Hot spots of mercury pollution in aquatic sediments and soils can contaminate local food webs and threaten ecosystems, but cleaning them up can be expensive and destructive. Researchers from the Smithsonian ...

Researchers from Cornell University have identified some agricultural management practices in the field that can either boost or reduce the risk of contamination in produce from two major foodborne pathogens: salmonella, ...

In many cities around the world, patrons of high-end restaurants want quality food that is flavorful and fresh. To satisfy their guests, chefs are looking closer and closer to home – to locally grown produce ...

Vaccinating cattle against the E. coli O157 bacterium could cut the number of human cases of the disease by 85%, according to scientists. The bacteria, which cause severe gastrointestinal illness and even death in humans ...

University of Calgary scientists have developed new technology that promises a safer, cheaper way to clean up hazardous PCBs in soil using ultraviolet light – the first technology of its kind in the world.

Hundreds of thousands of dead fish were left floating in a Chinese river after a chemical discharge, officials said Wednesday, the latest industrial accident to pollute the country's battered environment.

Foodborne illness

Foodborne illness (also foodborne disease and colloquially referred to as food poisoning) is any illness resulting from the consumption of contaminated food.

There are two types of food poisoning: food infection and food intoxication. Food infection refers to the presence of bacteria or other microbes which infect the body after consumption. Food intoxication refers to the ingestion of toxins contained within the food, including bacterially produced exotoxins, which can happen even when the microbe that produced the toxin is no longer present or able to cause infection. In spite of the common term food poisoning, most cases are caused by a variety of pathogenic bacteria, viruses, prions or parasites that contaminate food, rather than chemical or natural toxins.